| Author | Message | ||
  Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 170 Registered: 10-2006 |
Actually, my last trip to Paris was 24 hours. I was living in Germany, however. It was great! | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 530 Registered: 8-2006 |
Joanna, Not to worry -- three days in Paris is not nearly enough. You need to go for at least a month to make up for the last seven lean years of vacation famine. It is time (as Joseph in Egypt would have said) for the seven fat years! | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 169 Registered: 10-2006 |
Can you believe it, my arssistant is off for three days in Paris (his daughter is doing a semester overseas and he went for a long weekend!) I hope he goes to the Musee D'Orsay at least. I haven't had a vacation in seven years, oh well, it's good to be king, most of the time. I did some flesh mixes with a sample kit from Natural Pigments. I painted up a strip card with mixes of terre verte, a natural burnt sienna type pigment (terre ercolano or something like it) and lemon yellow ochre. The mixes are very nice. These paints are not as lustrous and bright as synthetic pigments, but they do have a quality about them. When I get a chance to scan in the test strip, I will post it here. But the flesh tones are really nice, I think. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 453 Registered: 8-2006 |
Joanna, I'm thankful you didn't give up on "Strength" and throw it out, but I do agree that sometimes we find no way to make use of an accident, or we feel trying to correct it would destroy other qualities in the painting, and that is the time to begin again. By the way, in the Louvre I once again saw the School of Fontainebleau painting of Diana Huntress. It somehow is able to communicate strength, even though it sticks with smooth and non-textured surfaces -- but that strength is different from the kind you portray in your painting. I like what you did. | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 116 Registered: 10-2006 |
Well,the "accidents" of watercolor are a "feature" of the medium. As opposed to a deficit. And I agree--I crumple up, swear mightily and start again if I hate the way something is going. There is that point of desperation where you want to do something rash, and then it occurs: I can throw this right out. And start again. I also find the subconscious mind does things. I keep drawing people at random and faces of old friends from years ago swim up out of the paper. Weird. | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 451 Registered: 8-2006 |
Thanks, Joanna, for your sharing your thinking. I felt the hard edges expressed strength as well, and thought it might have been your original intention. Isn't it great the way happy accidents happen in watercolor? They offset the ones that don't work! I commend you for sticking with the accident and letting it work, rather than reworking the original -- in my mind, continuing to fiddle around and mess around with a watercolor usually has diminishing benefits. Better just to begin again! | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 115 Registered: 10-2006 |
The choice of single color was because Hematite Burnt Orange (Daniel Smith) makes a very interesting skin texture. I wanted the paint to settle and not be mixed in any way that would interfere with the particulate nature of the hematite. The hard edges were an accident--I was going for a lot of contrast and the right leg was a bit whimpy. I added a wash to make it a lot darker value. The hard edge really doesn't belong mid thigh, but I ended up liking it and it adds a sense of discord to the normal softness of a female nude. So rather than scrub it down, I left it and in fact enhanced it a bit to stand out. I felt it did express the idea of strength, brittleness, vulnerability all mixed in one (the shadowy breast is the vulnerability part.) | ||
Grizrev Senior Member Username: Grizrev Post Number: 445 Registered: 8-2006 |
Joanna, Your discussion of colors and mixes for painting skin tones is quite interesting, but I notice you chose to use only one color for the flesh tones in your "Strength" painting. How do you make your decision as to whether to use just one color out of a tube, or to create a complex mix? I as*sume you intended the hard edges and that the painting didn't just happen to dry that way. What was your purpose? Did you feel that including some soft edges would have taken away from the "strength" idea? | ||
Joanna Advanced Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 113 Registered: 10-2006 |
On the subject of flesh colors, I like burnt oranges in mixes, such as Maimeri's Avignon Orange (which is PO 206 or good old Quinacridone Orange.) There is an interesting color from Old Holland called Golden Barok Red (they have the weirdest names in paint-dom) and it's PO 65 (a nameless and now-no-longer-manufactured burnt orange.) I tried it out on paper and it is fairly indestinguishable from Quin Orange, but very nice in the red area. By the way, I can't find a dupe of one other Old Holland (Cinnabar Green Light Extra, which in double Dutch apparently means not cinnebar, but the hue (extra) and not Prussian blue and yellow mix but some other things whipped together.) A true Spring green. Skips Green is more greenish. And there IS a duplicate of their Violet Grey (a lavender pastel good for florals like ageratum and chicory or for seascapes)--Joe's own American Journey Periwinkle, in dilution (it is a tad more opaque) is quite similar. This is a great shadow tone for those bluish shadows that haze around skin in cold light, caused by fuzz on the skin or that ineffable silvery beautiful sheen on very dark skin. | ||
Marie Senior Member Username: Marie Post Number: 426 Registered: 8-2006 |
Oh, and you wanted percentages .... that's harder to say. Basically, you want to get to a dull orange. Because I like cadmium, which is really strong in mixtures, I don't have to add much red to the raw sienna/yellow ochre. At the same time, you don't want the mix to be too yellow. I look for a hue that is about half way between the yellow and red, which for me means more earth yellow and less cadmium. If the figure is in sun, don't add any blue. If the figure is in shadow, you'll need to cool it off and darken it. By the way, I am especially fond of Winsor and Newton's raw sienna and yellow ochre. There is a huge amount of variation in the exact color of earth yellows across manufacturers. | ||
Joanna Intermediate Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 99 Registered: 10-2006 |
I might add, that I would not depend on a mix. I'd try to match value and temperature to what I'd already painted. In other words, one mix used in one painting might be totally wrong for another. If you are red-green color blind (not uncommon in men) you needn't worry. Just paint how you see and that is your expression of your vision for art. I don't see how you can compensate for insensitivity to reds except if someone tells you NOT to put so much in because it destroys your work. | ||
Marie Senior Member Username: Marie Post Number: 425 Registered: 8-2006 |
An easy combination for flesh is raw sienna or yellow ochre with some red -- I prefer cadmium red light. If I need to cool it off for a distant figure, I add some of whatever blue or violet I am using in the rest of my painting. It's pretty hard to go wrong with this combination. | ||
Joanna Intermediate Member Username: Joanna Post Number: 98 Registered: 10-2006 |
Face colors can be anything in a distance--it really depends on the mood you are trying to create. If realistic, take a look at photos of people in crowds. In shadow, their faces could be a cool purple! Or a blued sienna. Or even bluish (funny, you don't look Bluish--yeah, yeah, sorry about that.) The rule about distance colors is that they cool down, and in general, I find that a warm color in a distance does jump out too strongly for my tastes. I was looking at our salt marshes yesterday, and the sunset was painting the river pink, the ice was cold cold pale blue, like the upper sky, and the fields were warm raw sienna but the distant trees were a purple-green-burnt sienna color shading to a charcoal with no warmth at at. If I painted a distant fisherman on a dinghy, I'd have painted his face in shadow under his hat a purple with just a bit of sienna, probably. | ||
David - Guest Unregistered guest |
Hi, I'm just a beginner and concentrating mostly on landscapes & a few objects (buildings etc), and trying to not use a lot of colors but learn to mix from standards. These discussions seem to center on more detailed portraits, and all I want is a recommendation for a good color or mix for a very generic 'flesh' to use for a small spot of color for the face on small distant figures I might want to add to a 'scape, and a darkener for it for adding a shadow when the pose or position calls for it. I have problems with my eyes seeing reds accurately. I've tried but can't come up with a satisfying mix. What recommendations for a simplest of simple hues, please? And percentages would be very helpful I think. Thanks, David | ||
Zoe |
Jane, thanks for this explanation. I totally see what you mean and often find myself thinking "red" for "blue" and "green" for "orange" - not literally but just feeling a colour rather than copying it. I'd like to loosen the rein that either I put on myself from enforced conditioning or the rein that binds me for societal reasons. I'd love to see where you are going. Perhaps we'll find a mid-point. | ||
Thom |
Sorry-- Didn't mean any offense re "local color." Is it hard to get a venue for figure paintings? "round here, most ( no, all) shows and exhibitons have a "no nudes" policy. Don Andrews has an interesting approach to nudes and color. | ||
jandrle |
Whoa... I am stopped short at Thom's response... and find it odd. I will respond to Zoe's question and attempt to not use the incorrect terms... not being a word person anyway... I am working hard to use colors that capture how I feel about something rather than how it looks to me. An example would be hot sun in Key West... I might use Indian Yellows and Winsor Reds instead of just a neutral sand color for the beach. Or a yellow and red sky instead of a blue sky. I would describe it as inspirational rather than representational... The ultimate goal I believe is that when someone looks at a painting of mine they will feel the subject, not just recognize it. In terms of the figure, if a figure is stressed physically I might use purple, if the mood is sad I would use cool colors, perhaps quin gold highlights for a figure in the sun... None of this stuff is from a book, and I am just feeling my way through it, trying to develop and grow so that my paintings incorporate my reaction to what I see, and say something to someone else. It is hard. I paint the same subject five or ten times, usually in different compositions, until I begin to become familiar with it and then feel comfortable throwing color into it. Some are more successful than others. What I can say is that my sales of larger work have grown, I am able to show my work in more venues and the general response is positive to these changes I am making in my work. I hope some of this made sense. Jane | ||
Thom |
Thanks for the spelling--oil painter--arbitrary color. | ||
Zoe |
Thom - are you referring to Alexei von Jawlensky (the Russian expressionist)? If so, I thought he was strictly an oil painter. But don't know that for fact. Thanks. | ||
Thom |
Look at the fauvists to see artists who abandoned local color entirely, esp portraits of Jawlinski (sp?). Re. flesh tones being "local color" technically, perhaps, but when doing a portrait or a figure study, that's all of the color being depicterd. Local color as a term originally referred to large subjects such as landscape and the depiction (or abandonment thereof) of the precise colors of specific details to achieve a greater harmony by unifying the big color scheme. I would maintian that "local color" to describe flesh tones in a portrait or figure painting is inaccurate. | ||
Zoe |
Can you speak more of "abandoning local colour." Thanks. | ||
jandrle |
I have been using Winsor Red, Cad Orange, a touch of Indian Yellow with Winsor Violet for shadows... Sounds screaming but actually is very soft looking. Often I try to make my skin tones look kind of generic, then I use Burnt Sienna as well... But then I am working hard to abandon local color at this point in my painting. | ||
Zoe |
Interestingly, I just took a look at Dew's figure book and he uses rather unusual colours (to me) to create his shadows and form: alizarin enboldened with blues or subdued with permanent rose but most of all he renders his figures with bold strokes of paint leaving considerable large areas of the body (and face) the white of the paper. | ||
Anonymous |
I want to add to my comment about considering the flesh tones as derived from primaries, that when painting a figure or portrait you really only need three primaries--period. The flesh tones come from varying the relative amounts of the three colors. Regarding the original question as to how to render shadows, one need only observe one's subject carefully and adjust the mix of the 3 accordingly. This is a very widely used method that works much better that trying to incorporte an extensive palette. More harmony, more unity, more naturalness. | ||
Anonymous |
best to think of mixing flesh in terms of primaries--red yellow and blue. Any red yellow and blue will theoretically work. I have very good results with the following combinations: venetian red (very diluted -- overpowering otherwise) Raw Sienna Cerulean blue Other good reds are perylene maroon and burnt sienna. Other good blues are cobalt and ultramarine. Other good yellows--cadmium pale and yellow ochre | ||
Zoe |
I've been experimenting with options, my own of course: the earth's are my first choice, with some opaques like: ochre, indian red and yellow, added to Suzy's list above. And underpainting with purples, lightly for shadows, seems to work - easy on the touch or you get extreme distortion with layers. | ||
Suzy Toronto |
I use sienas, raw and burnt Umbers, Quin gold, Quin burnt Orange, ultramarine blue, thioindigo | ||
marie |
What pigments do you prefer for mixing flesh colors? Also, do you have any rules of thumb for mixing the difference between light and shadow in flesh colors? |
